There was a general murmur of agreement, which didn’t seem to make the officer any happier. “I said no,” he told the girl, pushing her toward the door. “Get out!”
“Watch the shoes,” she said, which were cork-heeled wedges at least five inches high.
But he didn’t listen. And the next thing I knew, a big earthenware pot of wine was smashing onto the stones, fey were cursing, girls were yelling, and the other pot was pouring all over the officer, when the dancer wobbled and fell into him. And then . . .
And then . . .
I stared around, mouth full of roll, as the room suddenly got darker. And farther away, although that wasn’t possible—was it? But it kind of seemed like it was. Maybe because the stones Pritkin and I had been sitting against were moving, opening up like they were swallowing us whole, pulling us back into our own little tunnel, one that hadn’t been there a second ago. And then abruptly closing behind us.
The yells, shrieks, and girlish laughter abruptly cut off, leaving us entombed in a womb of stone. One that was moving a whole lot slower than it had been a moment ago. And then barely moving at all, stones that had been almost liquid suddenly solidifying again, gritting against each other, groaning in my ears. And pressing against me to the point that I could . . . barely . . . breathe—
Pritkin, I thought, because I didn’t have enough air in my lungs to scream.
And then we were out, popping like a cork out of a champagne bottle, hitting open air and falling what had to be six feet, onto a hard patch of dirt.
Chapter Fifty-two
I lay there, stunned and half-choked, because I had been trying to breathe through bread. But the fall seemed to have jarred it loose, and I spat it out, all the while staring at the wall above us. Which was still moving in a very unrocklike way, as if it couldn’t remember where all the stones went.
“Myrddin?” I said nervously, and didn’t get an answer. I looked over to find Pritkin on his back, appearing unconscious—or worse. “Myrddin!”
“I’m all right.” It was faint.
“Are you sure?” I scrambled over.
He opened his eyes to look at me, and they were almost completely red from popped blood vessels. “I . . . hate . . . earth magic.”
It didn’t look like it liked him too much, either.
But it obeyed.
“So,” I asked, after a moment, “what do they call someone with four?”
He huffed out what might have been a laugh, and shook his head at me.
And continued to shake it when the earth suddenly moved underneath us. Enough to blast a bunch of birds out of a nearby tree, like they’d been shot from a cannon. And to throw me on my butt when I tried to get up.
I looked at Pritkin. “Did you—”
“No.”
He rolled to his knees, staring at the lightning scribbling warnings across the sky. And illuminating blue-black clouds stacked high above skirts of rain. That wasn’t so weird; we’d been inside the castle for more than an hour. They’d had plenty of time to form up.
Except that they were everywhere, on all sides, at least the ones I could see. Just huge gray sheets rushing toward us, illuminated here and there by neon flashes. One of which hit a lone tree, far in the distance on a hill, exploding it into burning pieces that were almost immediately doused by the incoming tide.
And that was exactly what it looked like, I realized: a tide rolling over land, drowning everything in its wake.
Then another tremor hit, as if the earth itself was angry.
“The kitchens,” Pritkin said, pulling me up. “They’re not far.”
We ran.
The hill on which the castle sat had no trees, probably for defense. But down below, a small orchard ringed the base, the dense foliage swaying in the rising wind. Beyond it, I could see the walled town, its cook fires glittering in the night and sending thin threads of smoke skyward, which were being pulled off center by the winds. And which looked so small and insignificant next to the power of nature.
Everyone else must have thought so, too. Because there was frantic activity around the festival tents, as vendors and partygoers alike scrambled for cover. While out in the harbor, the boats dipped and rolled, the water beneath them cresting gray and white, like clutching hands, cold and angry.
“Come on!” Pritkin told me, pulling on my hand, because I’d unconsciously stopped to stare.
“Sorry.”
We’d just rounded the side of the castle when a thin, cold rain began to fall, the first outriders of what looked to be an onslaught. It hit a moment later, drenching us as we pelted across a garden clinging precariously to the slope of the hill, tripping on cabbages and mushing beans. And then through a door, our muddy feet messing up the clean-swept hall next to the kitchen.
Cheerful golden light splashed the stones in front of us. While behind, the moonlight was eclipsed by clustering clouds, cutting off as suddenly as if someone had flipped a switch. I turned around to stare at it, a weird feeling coming over me, while Pritkin wrestled with the heavy slab of the door, trying to swing it shut with rain lashing at it in gusts like hammerblows.
But he got it done, just as the cook poked his head out of the kitchen, a spoon in one hand and a bowl in the other. And a frown on his face. “What’s this, then?” he asked as some kind of sauce seeped onto the stones. “What’s happening?”
“Storm blew up,” Pritkin said dryly.
The man sighed. “And here I was, hoping to sneak off down t’ the faire later. Just my—”
He broke off when a shudder ran through the stones under our feet, hard enough to send us stumbling against the wall. That would have been worrying enough in a modern structure, but this wasn’t one. This was basically a mountain made out of stone.
Which had just shaken noticeably.
“All right, what is this?” the cook demanded, about the time we were mobbed by a mass of people coming from inside the castle. One that quickly filled the tiny corridor.
“What is this? What is this?” the outraged cook was yelling, barring the way into his precious kitchen while we hugged the wall on the other side to avoid being trampled.
And then some genius opened the door.
The hall immediately became a maelstrom of flashing light, screaming people and lashing rain. “Close the door! Close the door!” everyone at this end yelled.
But the ones getting drenched weren’t listening. Or maybe they couldn’t hear over the booming thunder, because the whole place sounded like we’d been caught in a giant kettledrum. It was deafening to the point of being painful, and I guessed they thought so, too. Because they were turning around, they were rushing back this way, they were—
“Myrddin!” I yelled.
“Stay with me!” He pushed me ahead of him as the stampede hit, sweeping us and everyone around us along with it. We burst into the area with the stairs, which was considerably larger than the hall, but no less packed. And was getting worse, because more people were flooding in all the time.